1. Silent cinema music and the transition to sound
University of Nottingham
28 Feb 2017
Laraine Porter De Montfort University
AHRC research project British Silent Cinema and the Transition to Sound

2. Silent to sound timeline
1896 First public film exhibition
1909 First permanent cinema buildings
1914 First manual Playing to Pictures: a Guide for Pianists and Conductors of Motion Picture Theatres W. Tyacke George W. Tyacke George entitled Playing to Pictures: a Guide for Pianists and Conductors of Motion Picture Theatres
1915 First film score to Birth of a Nation (Griffith and Joseph Carl Briel)
1920s most films had cue sheets compiled by distribution companies with little or no input from directors/producers.
Every performance more or less unique and unrecorded
1927 First ‘talkie’ sync-sound feature films

3. Examples
1916 The Battle of the Somme: Geoffrey Malins/John McDowell (GB)
1927 Chicago: Frank Urson (USA)
1929 A Cottage on Dartmoor: Anthony Asquith (GB)
Revisionist scores
1929 Turksib: Viktor Alexandrovitsh Turin (USSR)
1934 Man of Aran: Robert Flaherty (GB)

4. William Alwyn (composer) as an 11 year-old cinema musician in 1916
I waited for him [the MD] outside the cinema, a small boy with a flute-case anxiously tucked under the arm, and punctually he arrived, scrubbed clean and very much alert, after his long day in the boot factory. We entered by a side door and stumbled into the auditorium…and here we were in a new world – a world that was to provide so much of absorbing interest for me as a composer in the future. One by one the band arrived ….At last after much furtive tuning and whispering, we were all ready…and off we started on first piece on the desk. I was just beginning to get under way when another signal from the violinist left me stranded in mid-air…It was a game of hare and hounds with one small terrier puffing well in the rear. The essential link in the performance was the pianist who bound this hotch-potch of music together with his rapid modulations and improvised chords. (Huntley and Manvell:19)
The Technique of Film Music; John Huntley and Roger Manvell, The Focal Press, London 1957

5. 1910s: The Somme Films The Battle of the Somme (1916)
The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks (1917)
Original music medleys by J. Morton Hutcheson
Propagandist and triumphalist to create support for the campaigns
These scores now sound inappropriate as we know the reality of these campaigns

6. Toby Haggith, IWM on the problem of music for the Somme films
In Britain during the First World War, all of the country's 4,500 cinemas would have provided live music to enhance the experience of watching a film. We knew that when the Somme battle films were screened, their propaganda function was promoted by martial music, sometimes played by military bands…However, since the sound era… the films were shown silent or with an improvised accompaniment from recordings of randomly selected classical music….More generally, we were aware of the tendency for those providing an accompaniment to introduce pathos and a wistful, even mournful tone, reflecting widely held attitudes to the First World War and to the Battle of the Somme in particular. (Journal of Film Preservation, April 2014)

7. J Morton Hutcheson’s music suggestions for Battle of the Somme
Including marches and overtures
Published in The Bioscope, 17 August 1916
‘[the musicians] must realize the seriousness and awfulness of the scenes depicted most realistically, and even where the scenes are showing the brighter side of events in this Great Push the “accompaniment” must not be too bright. We don’t want to hear “Sunshine of Your Smile” played in any part of this film. The pictures themselves will impress the public, as nothing else has done, or can possibly do, and the “accompaniment” must be treated with all respect and seriousness, having regard to the tragic situations depicted.’

8. The Battle of the Somme (1916) Music 1916 and 2006
Original 1916 score opens with “War in the Air” march by Olsen compare this to Laura Rossi’s score 90 years later.

9. The Battle of the Ancre and the Advance of the Tanks (1917)

10. 1920s Cue sheets became the norm
Most cinemas had ensembles or full-orchestras of 16 plus.
The rise of super-cinemas with auditoria of 2-3,000
Jazz-based music from America became popular for flapper films, Gangsters and fast-paced comedies

11. Chicago (1927) Music by Rodney Sauer performed by Mont Alto
Reconstructed from original library music selections compiled in 1927
by Rudolf Berliner.

12. Chicago Rodney Sauer Original cue sheet had 59 cues, 11 are extant
Film swings between ‘peppy’ jazz-baby scenes, romance, comedy, serious melodrama and murder scenes
Challenge in abrupt shifts in register
Question of what ‘foley’ sounds to include (gunshots, bells, player-piano/roll music, alarms, car horns etc).
Music needs to give insight into character motivation and emotion and at times to provide ironic commentary

13. Music and the transition to sound
Don Juan (1926, Warner Bros) the first feature film to tour with a synchronised music score
The Jazz Singer (1927, Warner Bros) the first part-talkie with synchronised dialogue sequences
The Singing Fool (1928, Warner Bros) the first full talkie
Blackmail (1929, BIP, Hitchcock) probably Britain’s first talkie

14. A Cottage on Dartmoor Anthony Asquith 1929 Music by Stephen Horne
Made on the cusp on the talkies. Acknowledges the end of the art of silent film and the birth of the new art form of talking pictures

15. Silent film and revisionist approaches
Respect for the spirit of the original film
Acknowledgement of the shift in musical tastes since the 1920s
Need to reach a new (younger) audience with recognisable music and artistes
Contemporary audiences possibly unfamiliar with the language of silent film/music and need different approaches
Contemporary musicians have a wider repertoire of musical styles to draw upon.
New musical technologies create a wider palette of possible approaches

16. The popular revival of silent film and live music
Battleship Potemkin (1925)
Trafalgar Square, 2005.
New score by Neil
Tennant.

17. Man of Aran (1934)
Original music by John Greenwood, directed by Louis Levy and based on Irish folk songs.

18. Man of Aran Music by British Sea Power (2009)

19. Turksib (1929) Music by Bronnt Industries Kapital (2011)
Guy Bartell’s electronic and sampled music score reflect the clashes between nature and industry in the building of the great railway across the Russian landscape.

20. Turksib (1929) Viktor Alexandrovitsh Turin
Soviet film documenting the construction of the Turkestan Siberia railway